


Mark My Love Against the Wall

by updatemelater



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV), wayhaught - Fandom
Genre: A little angsty?, F/F, Mentions of Champ - Freeform, and bulshar goes down pretty quick, but happy ending, doc is not a vampire, i tried my best to fix season three, it's mostly a character study on waverly's abandonment issues, jolene is covered so maybe watch out if depression and suicide are triggery for you, the earp sisters are the best sisters, there's plenty of wayhaught, waverly can't say i love you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 15:32:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16200422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/updatemelater/pseuds/updatemelater
Summary: Waverly Earp can't say "I love you."-Waverly Earp works at Shorty’s because it’s easy; because it’s what she knows. She dates Champ Hardy for the same reason.She studies dead languages and old religions online because there’s still a curse on their family, even if Daddy is dead and Willa is dead and Wynonna is running, and because she knows that she’s perfectly capable and willing to stop it, even if no one else will. She’ll work hard and she’ll be ready to be the hero, when the time comes.And the time does come, eventually, but not for her. Never for her.Because she’s not the Heir.





	Mark My Love Against the Wall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheGaySmurf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGaySmurf/gifts).



> Spoilers through season three. Canon divergent. 
> 
> This is part character study and part season three fix-it. Doc isn't a vampire. Nicole and Jeremy and Robin have a part in saving the world. Bulshar goes down pretty quick. I've tried to stick as close as I can to canon, other than that. It's a lot of feelings, you guys. Oh and also? It's looooong. 
> 
> -
> 
> This piece is all thanks to this post: https://iamthegaysmurf.tumblr.com/post/178216200176/you-know-what-bugs-me-the-fact-that-waverly
> 
> Also, while we're on the subject, a huge thank you to Smurf for keeping this rickety ride on the road and fixing all of my timeline issues and oh-my-god-the-motherforking-COMMAS. I really appreciate all the hard work that you did on this. It's not as angsty as I would have liked. Oh well. I'll get 'em next time. 
> 
> Is okay to gift this to the person who beta-ed it? Like, here, you worked on your own gift? Enjoy? I don't really know the rules, but I'm living on the edge anyway. Thank you, Smurf. I wouldn't have even written this without your meta.

Waverly Earp works at Shorty’s because it’s easy; because it’s what she knows. She dates Champ Hardy for the same reason. 

She studies dead languages and old religions online because there’s still a curse on their family, even if Daddy is dead and Willa is dead and Wynonna is running, and because she knows that she’s perfectly capable and willing to stop it, even if no one else will. She’ll work hard and she’ll be ready to be the hero, when the time comes.

And the time does come, eventually, but not for her. Never for her.

Because she’s not the Heir.

She _should_ be. She’s the only one in more than a decade who’s been taking this seriously.

Well, she and Curtis have been taking this seriously, but Curtis isn’t an Earp. Married to a sister of a wife, and all that, but he believes in Waverly, tells her all the time that if anyone can do it, she can. He sinks his life savings into funding her education, quizzes her on Latin and Babylonian and translations of hieroglyphics. He gives Champ a job, and pays him fairly, even though he doesn’t actually approve of Waverly’s choice of a partner, just so she’ll be provided for while she’s working so hard at school.

He treats her like his own daughter.

She _loves_ their tiny family. Her and Curtis and Gus.

When Curtis dies, it’s like the light goes out of the world. Waverly can’t even bring herself to get out of bed to go to the memorial service. Gus might not understand, might never forgive her for not being there, but she can’t.

Her whole world shrinks by half, and she doesn’t know how she’s supposed to be okay with that.

Curtis didn’t go by choice, she knows, but still. Death is just a different way of leaving.

She’s had enough practice in dealing with this, god knows, but this time, she’s too broken even to cry.

So, she lies in bed during the wake and maps the flaking paint on the ceiling with tired eyes.  

Waverly remembers a time when she was so small, just a wisp of a girl, but the love inside of her took up a whole universe. Mama, Wynonna, Gus and Curtis, even Willa and Daddy. It enveloped them all.

And now it’s just her in her bed with a hollowed-out heart, and a boyfriend who’s god-knows-where doing god-knows-what, and an aunt who’s busy grieving her partner.

There’s no one here for Waverly, and at this point, she doesn’t know how to be here for herself anymore. She’s so goddamn _tired_.

So she stays in bed, and listens to the traffic on the street down below and the bar noise drifting up the stairs, and she tries not to remember how Curtis swung her on his knee or taught her to fire a shotgun or let her help plant tomatoes in the garden after school.

She sleeps, she thinks, and that helps some, but when she wakes up, she’s still down to a one-person world, and the hollow in her heart feels like a canyon.

—

 _Wynonna and Willa stand against the doorframe, and Daddy runs lines above their heads to mark their height in uneven pencil lines._  

_“Stand up straight now, girls. Years from now, we’ll be able to look back and see how you grew.”_

_“Daddy?” Waverly says from the doorway, rubbing her eyes, the ruffled sleeves of her nightgown bunched up around her elbows. Wynonna and Willa pinch each other and giggle._

_She wants to be with her sisters. She wants her daddy to mark her height against the wall, even if she doesn’t know exactly what it means. Wynonna and Willa get to do it. Why can’t she do it, too?_

_“Not now,” he says, turning his back. “Go back to bed.”_

_“Come here, my angel,” Mama says, scooping her up and whisking her upstairs. Waverly is far too little to know what the look on her daddy’s face means, but she settles into the blankets when Mama drops her into bed and mumbles, “Love you, Mama,” sleep still in her voice._

_“I love you, too, baby girl, more than anything. You’re my sweet angel girl.” Mama kisses her forehead, and Waverly forgets about the pencil and the lines and the giggling going on downstairs without her._  

_Waverly is three years old._

—

On Wynonna’s 27th birthday, Waverly takes out her flip phone and sends Wynonna a text that says, “Happy birthday.” It’s been three years since she’s even _heard_ from Wynonna, let alone seen her, but they’re still sisters, damn it, the only family Waverly has left now besides Gus, and Waverly Earp doesn’t give up on the people she loves, not even if she sometimes feels like she’s keeping the entire world spinning all on her own.

She wants to text that Curtis is gone, and that it’s just her and Gus, and that Waverly should be planning to go to the wake, but she doesn’t. Curtis isn’t Wynonna’s family; not like he is Waverly’s.

Was.

 _Was_ Waverly’s.

Wynonna won’t understand that this is the second father Waverly has lost now, and she’s only just turned twenty-one. It’s just one more thing that they don’t have in common.  

Wynonna doesn’t text back, and after a few hours, Waverly stops checking her phone. 

— 

 _Her birthday comes with nothing but a tiny cake that Mama made just for her and a soft “happy birthday” sung by Mama and Wynonna after dinner while Willa and Daddy are out shooting._  

_“Happy birthday, baby girl,” Wynonna tells her when she blows out her candles, and Waverly loves the way their mama’s eyes shine at her girls around the table._

_“Thank you for my cake, Mama,” Waverly says, bouncing. “I love it.”_

_“I love_ **_you_** _,” her mama tells her, and Waverly is maybe the happiest she’s been in her whole small life._

 _After she goes to bed, she can hear Daddy and Willa and Wynonna downstairs, marking off another year against the doorframe without her. She doesn’t understand why it makes her cry into her pillow._  

_Waverly is four years old._

—

The second Shorty’s is open again after the wake, Waverly is working.

She has no idea how to sit still with her grief, turning it over in her mind like a puzzle box she can’t solve, so she slips into her red and blue Shorty’s crop top and thumps down the stairs to sling drinks for fresh-off-the-truck farm hands and men who are such regulars that they have nameplates on the backs of their chairs.

She’s just coming out of the stockroom when she sees Champ for the first time in days, taking the stairs up to her apartment two at a time with some _skank_ right behind him. 

“What’s the flavor of the week this time, Champ?” Waverly mutters, grabbing her shotgun from the storeroom.

She pumps it once right before she bursts through her apartment door, psyching herself up. No way is her boyfriend going to get away with screwing some floozy in her own bed while she’s right here in the same building. Not again.

Her family might not be super big, but it’s _hers_ , goddammit, and Waverly Earp protects what’s hers.

Except that, this time, it’s not Stephanie Jones or any of the other girls from Waverly’s old cheerleading squad. It’s…

“Wynonna?” she says, once the shotgun blast dies out, her favorite feather pillow and her last shred of respect for Champ Hardy the only casualties.

“Hey, sis,” Wynonna says, and everything that Waverly has dammed up for three years shakes loose. When she lowers her shotgun, something very dangerous happens. She begins to hope.  

Her sister is home.

It doesn’t occur to her until long after the feathers settle that she’s shot up her own apartment.

— 

_“Willa, I don’t want to.”_

_“Fine,” Willa says coolly from the safety of the barn floor, looking up. She crosses her arms against her chest, one hip stuck out. “I’ll just go and tell Daddy you were going through his things. He hasn’t been drinking_ **_that_ ** _much today.”_

_“No, please,” Waverly begs from up in the loft._

_“Then get,” Willa says, and Waverly sobs and steps out onto the beam, her arms out for balance. She stoops, and Willa clucks her tongue._

_“Stand up straight, or it doesn’t count.”_

_Waverly knows that the beam is a safer bet than her daddy when he’s been drinking._

_She stands and totters forward, fifteen feet up in the air._

_She makes it across, and when she finally climbs down, she sidles up to Willa._

_“Did I do okay?” she asks in a voice not much bigger than herself._

_Willa shrugs. “I guess it was good enough that I don’t have to tell Daddy. This time.”_

_Waverly throws her arms around Willa, then. “Thank you, Willa,” she says, muffled into Willa’s side, and Willa pats her once on the back and walks away._

_Waverly is four years old._

— 

She’s thrilled that Wynonna is home. She _is_.

But she’s also… not going to be the Heir. 

It’s fine. Because now she can focus on helping Wynonna and Deputy Marshal Dolls with all of the things she’s been learning and cataloging for years. It’s still what she’s been preparing for, just… not in the way she’d imagined when she was full of college credits and cappuccino and multi-colored pens. 

Dolls certainly takes some getting used to, but Waverly comes to accept that he’s a non-negotiable string that comes with having her sister back. He’s extremely by-the-book (which she appreciates — she _is_ a Virgo, after all), but there’s a rigidity that comes with him that doesn’t play well with Wynonna’s don’t-tell-me-what-to-do attitude. Their tension puts Waverly on edge.

Her entire world has shifted dramatically in a matter of weeks, and it feels like the ground is going to fall away beneath her at any given moment, but Waverly Earp is nothing if not optimistic, and she makes a silent vow to make space in her world for Dolls, too.

All of her hard work is finally going to pay off. She’s going to be useful to them. To Dolls and Wynonna. To Black Badge.

Curtis would be so, _so_ proud of her, if he were here.  

Maybe someday she’ll have a family again.

Maybe this time, they’ll stay. 

—

_Waverly takes to playing by herself in the woods, alone._

_Wynonna and Willa are too old to play, they tell her._

_There isn’t anybody else._

_She pretends that she’s a princess and that the woods are her kingdom. For some reason, it never even crosses her mind to make herself a queen instead._

_She plays this way for weeks, and every day is the same, until one day it’s not. There’s something new in the woods._

_Some_ **_one_** _._

_Another little girl, just her age, with wide, round eyes and dark matted hair and mud on her face._

_“My name is Jolene,” she tells Waverly. “Wanna be friends?”_

_“Yep,” Waverly answers. “I don’t have any friends.”_

_“None?”_

_“Do you?”_

_Jolene thinks about this, and then says, “Nope. I don’t.”_

_“I’ll be your friend,” Waverly says. “We’ll be best friends.”_

_“Okay,” Jolene says, and Waverly follows her further into the woods._

_They make trails together, and Waverly shows Jolene her kingdom. “I’m the woodland princess,” Waverly says._

_“Right,” Jolene answers._

_“You can be…” Waverly searches for the right role._

_“Your servant?”_  

 _“No.” Waverly wrinkles her nose. “We could have two princesses. I make the laws.”_  

_“We can?”_

_“Of course,” Waverly tells her. “We’re best friends.”_

_“Yep. Forever.”_

_“I love you,” Waverly says, and she hugs Jolene. She’s happy, here in their woodland kingdom, hers and Jolene’s. It’s nice to finally share something with someone. Something important._

_They get lost, and the sky gets darker, and Waverly crouches beside Jolene, while the branches tear at her coat and the coyotes howl in the distance._

_“We’ll get eaten by wolves,” Waverly whispers. “We’ll freeze to death.”_

_“We won’t,” Jolene tells her._

_“How do you know?”_

_“Because I live in the woods.”_

_“Nobody lives in the woods,” Waverly says, and when a branch snaps nearby, Waverly reaches for Jolene’s hand, but there isn’t any hand to grasp. Jolene is… she’s_ **_gone_** _, taken by something deep into the woods, and Waverly lets loose an ungodly howl._  

 _The flashlights find her hours later, shivering and crying, and when they get closer, Waverly can see that Daddy is on the end of one beam and Mama is on the end of the other. They take her home, wrapped up in a blanket, and she cries for Jolene all the way. She can’t understand why they would just leave her best friend out here._  

_When they get back, Daddy says he’ll look for Jolene, and Mama goes a little crazy when he’s gone. She lashes Waverly to the big post in the barn, just below where Willa had made her walk across the beam._

_“I’ll kill her!” Mama shrieks._

_“Mama? You’re scaring me.” Waverly can’t stop crying, can’t suck the tears back up, no matter how hard she tries._

_“This is for you, baby girl. You’re my angel, my perfect one, and I won’t let her have you! Demon!” Mama spits, and Waverly pulls fruitlessly at the ropes._

_“Mama, please don’t. I_ **_love_ ** _you!” Waverly shrieks._

 _“Don’t you see? I love you too, baby, more than anything. I’m doing this_ **_for_ ** _you. It’s all for you.”_

 _Mama kicks over the lantern and the whole barn goes up in flames._  

_Waverly thrashes against the rope, and chokes on the smoke, and she’s too little to understand that the soft light that surrounds her, feather-like and stretching out, wrapping around and moving her through the rope, has sprouted from her own back. She’s out of the barn in a blink and crawling on the frozen ground. A rock slices her hand, and then she’s scooped up for the second time in a day, and one of the men Daddy works with is shushing her._

_His moustache tickles her ear._

_She watches from the front porch while he pushes Mama into the back of his car, the red and blue lights leaving spots in her eyes when she blinks._

_“Don’t you do this, Randy! You_ **_know_ ** _me. I’d never hurt her.” She presses her face against the window. “Waverly! Baby girl! I love you! Your mama loves you more than anything!”_

_She can barely hear Mama’s muffled voice through the glass. Wynonna sits on the porch swing next to her and twirls her fingers in Waverly’s hair, and Waverly watches as the policeman takes their mama off into the part of the dark that doesn’t give her back. She waits until she can’t see the lights anymore to bury her face against Wynonna’s shoulder to cry._

_Wynonna doesn’t call Waverly ‘baby girl’ again. Not for a long time._

_And she doesn’t see Jolene again after that. She’s lost her mama and her best friend in same day._

_Waverly is four years old._

—

Hope flares up inside of her like a beacon, and she knows — she _knows_ — that if it’s snuffed out this time, it’ll kill her, but she can’t help it. She wants to be a part of something _so_ badly she can taste it, and here it is, sitting right in front of her.

The Black Badge Division.

Wynonna might go kicking and screaming into her destiny, but it’s all Waverly Earp has ever wanted, and she’ll run into its embrace, arms wide open, accepting everything it has to offer with hope in her eyes and light in her heart.

She’s going to save the world, and then maybe, _maybe someday_ , it won’t feel so fucking small.

—

 _Waverly watches with wide eyes, huddled against the wall, when Daddy is dragged out the door. And then Willa disappears through the window, and all Waverly can think is,_ **_Don’t go! I’ll be good, I’ll walk across the beam! Just please don’t go!_ ** _What comes out of her mouth instead is a scream that licks fire down her throat when Wynonna picks up Daddy’s gun and fires. Their daddy goes limp in the dirt outside. She can see him through the window, how he just lays there, face down, and doesn’t get up to stop them from dragging Willa off._

 _She could understand if it were_ **_her_ ** _being carted off by strange men, but Willa is his favorite. How could he let her go? Why doesn’t he_ **_do_ ** _something?_  

_She can see the exact moment that Wynonna breaks, and she’s by her sister’s side in an instant when Wynonna sinks to the floor, her arms around Wynonna’s neck._

_“You didn’t mean it,” she cries, and Wynonna just stares. “You didn’t mean it. You love him.”_

_“I do love him,” Wynonna says numbly. “I do.”_

_Waverly is six years old._

— 

Of course, she realizes too late that trying to end the curse might _actually_ kill her. Because now she’s on her tiptoes on a stool in the dirt, clawing at the the rope around her neck and praying to all of the ancient gods she can remember from her studies that the stool beneath her won’t wobble too wide and give way. She’s here, struggling against the pull of this curse, and Wynonna is out there, somewhere, on a bus.

Running.

 _Again_.

 _This is the fourth time you’ve abandoned me_ , she thinks while the Revenants laugh about how easy this is, bringing down this dumb bitch of an Heir.  

“Easiest one yet,” they say, as Waverly steadies herself on the stool.

Except that this time… oh, this time, Wynonna _doesn’t_ run. 

She comes back into Waverly’s life, wielding Peacemaker and hellfire, and she blows the Revenants into next week before she pulls Waverly down off the rope. 

“You okay, baby girl?” Wynonna asks, and Waverly, gasping for breath and happy to find it, _finally_ cries.

—

_Waverly’s world is shrinking. Daddy is gone; Willa and Mama, too, and it’s just Wynonna and Uncle Curtis and Aunt Gus now. They’re her family, and she loves them more than anything._

_Wynonna gets a black eye and is suspended for fighting at school._

_Waverly brings her the cookie from her lunch when she gets home._

_“I saved it for you,” she says, sliding it across the table._

_Wynonna crinkles her nose. “It’s oatmeal raisin.”_

_Waverly’s smile evaporates. “It was the only kind left.”_  
_  
“Yeah, because you can’t sneak fruit into a cookie and have anybody want to eat it.”_

_“I wanted to do something nice for you.” She’s three years older now, since Willa made her walk the beam, but her voice sure hasn’t gotten any bigger._

_“You shouldn’t be bringing me your lunch,” Wynonna tells her._

_“Not my lunch. Just the cookie.” Waverly wants to tell Wynonna she loves her, because she does, more than anything in the whole wide world, but something stops the words in her throat, like a raisin from that cookie that just won’t go down. “You’re my sister,” she says instead._

_It’s not enough to make Wynonna stay. She’s gone by morning, sent to an asylum that specializes in dealing with “troubled teens.”_  

_Waverly is smart enough to know that it’s not her fault. Of course it isn’t. But knowing and feeling are two different things._

_Waverly is seven years old._  

—

 _Maybe someday_ saunters into Waverly’s life dressed in standard-issue khakis and a tight french braid. She introduces herself as Nicole Haught, and she’s all dimples and swagger, and the way she looks at Waverly is something else altogether. She makes Waverly’s blood race in her veins just by standing here, and Waverly finds herself stumbling over her words while the blush creeps into Nicole’s cheeks.

She thumps down a business card so frayed that Waverly wonders how long Nicole has carried it around in her pocket, working up the nerve to introduce herself. It’s the perfect mix of confidence and apprehension, and Waverly feels like she could get drunk on it. Before Nicole leaves the bar, she looks at Waverly like she’s _really_ seeing her, and Waverly is almost knocked off of her feet. She’s never seen that look on another person’s face before, and certainly not aimed at her. She wonders absently for the rest of the day, with Nicole’s card hot in her pocket, what other expressions she might be able to draw up on that pretty face.  

Of course, Waverly’s still with Champ. Reliable, predictable Champ, who is only one of two people in two decades who has never left her. Sure, he sleeps around, and he doesn’t like to talk about anything serious, but he’s _there_. No matter what he gets up to during the day, he always comes home to Waverly at the end of it.

So she waits for Nicole to give up, to lose interest.

Waverly is friendly enough, sure, but she’s friendly with everyone. It’s kind of her thing. And it’s only a matter of time before Nicole moves on to other interests. Right?

Except Nicole Haught is a woman who knows her own mind and is apparently not afraid in the slightest to show Waverly Earp what’s on it.

Weeks pass, and Nicole is constantly there, offering support. A ride home. A cup of coffee. A warm look in passing at the station. And, despite her own steely resolve, Waverly finds herself looking forward to these interactions so much that when she heads to the Black Badge office and Nicole is out on a call, Waverly actually _misses_ her. 

It’s then that Waverly realizes that something has been planted in her heart and begun to take root, and Nicole has been tending it while Waverly wasn’t looking.

She breaks it off with Champ later that week.

She tells herself that it’s because he doesn’t value her, that they’re not compatible, and that’s _true_ , but she’s leaving out the part about how she feels like her world has bloomed into spring in the past few weeks, even though it’s the dead of winter. 

It no longer feels like a too-small dating pool, like there isn’t anyone better.

She _knows_ there is.

—

_Waverly’s world is down to just Uncle Curtis and Aunt Gus, now. She writes Wynonna letters for a while, of course she does, but she never gets anything in return, and sometimes it feels like both of her sisters are dead instead of just one._

_She’s a sweet kid, but her world keeps a population of two until she watches Champ Hardy and Marcus Wilson shoving Chrissy Nedley into the porta-potty behind the bleachers during a football game._  

_She doesn’t even think about it. There’s a branch on the ground, knocked down from the kicking autumn winds, and Waverly grabs it and snaps the outshoots off of it._

_“Hey!” she yells, and the boys stop and look at her, long enough to let Chrissy topple out of the flimsy plastic door, sobbing. “You’ve bullied your last girl, Champ Hardy,” Waverly says, stepping forward. She brings the branch up, hard, and Champ doubles over, drops to his knees, and wheezes out of his mouth. “You want some, too?” she asks Marcus, but he’s already running._

_She helps Chrissy away. They sit huddled under a blanket together for the football game, and Waverly feels her world expand and stretch to accommodate a third._

_Waverly is twelve years old._  

—

It doesn’t take long for Pete York to hit on her after the breakup, and Waverly wonders if Pete York has ever given her the time of day. She can’t think of a single time.

She shuts him down before he can even finish asking.

As much as she wants to see how good things could be with Nicole, there are so many things holding her back. She really likes Nicole. She’s smart and brave and extremely noble. Waverly imagines that she could have been a knight, if they’d lived a thousand years ago. 

She listens, actually _listens_ to Waverly. God, that’s a huge one. When Waverly talks, about anything, Nicole looks like she’s hanging on every word, like she could hear Waverly’s voice every day for the rest of her life and never get tired of it.  

Waverly finds that Nicole challenges her in all sorts of ways. To be better, to study harder. To help her with unusual Purgatory cases. She’s done a decent job through the years of tamping down thoughts of being with another woman sexually, but Nicole is challenging that, too, and Waverly can’t help that her mind wanders some days to what it would be like to kiss Nicole, to feel their bodies pressed together, to feel Nicole’s breath hot on her neck, puffing a staccato beat in time with the way her body moves.  

Thank god for Gus, who finally nudges Waverly in Nicole’s direction. It means everything, to have the woman who raised her not only accept that she’s clearly attracted to another woman, but is encouraging her to explore that in order to be her best, authentic self. If being with Nicole meant alienating her only remaining family, Waverly is positive that they would never be more than a forbidden tryst in her imagination, late at night while she’s alone in her own bed, her hands in a clandestine meeting with her more intimate parts. 

But with Gus’s encouragement, Waverly marches herself over to the police station and straight into the Sheriff’s office and climbs Nicole like a tree.

Nicole is all chivalry and gentleness, of course, but once Waverly convinces her that she wants this, that she wants _them_ , Nicole pushes her down on her back on Nedley’s couch and moves against her like they’ve been lovers for ages.

And holy jeez, five minutes on the couch with Nicole is better than a whole week in Champ Hardy’s bed.

Waverly can’t stop grasping at her everywhere, and Nicole can’t seem to stop the joy pouring out of her face.

When Nicole finally pulls her up, holding her and swaying slightly, Waverly’s legs feel like jelly.

“I don’t know how I’m going to walk back to Shorty’s,” Waverly admits, and Nicole grins and presses another kiss against her mouth. Waverly can feel herself heating up again instantly, but Nicole pulls back and laces their fingers together. 

“Come on,” she says, “I’ll drive you.”

—

 _Waverly forgets her backpack at school and has to double back._  

_“Are you sure?” Chrissy asks. They’re almost halfway to Chrissy’s house._

_“Yeah, it’s fine. I’ll just grab it and head over. There’s no reason for both of us to walk all the way back.”_

_The school hallway is dark by the time she gets there, and as she walks past an empty classroom, the sound of a desk scooting against the floor makes her whip her head toward the sound._

_Two people are kissing, pressed up against the big oak desk in the front of the room._

_One of them is a cheerleader named Alanna, a few years ahead of Waverly. They pull each other closer, and Alanna runs her hand up and squeezes at her partner’s chest with enough force to turn them enough for Waverly to see…_

_Oh._

**_Oh_** _._

_It’s another girl._

_Waverly stands dumbstruck in the hallway and watches them kiss until Alanna catches her eye and grins and licks her lips. Waverly presses her mouth into a thin line and hurries to her locker, trying to forget what she saw, but it sticks with her all the way back to Chrissy’s house. Even after she drops down onto the floor of Chrissy’s bedroom to study, she can’t get the thought out of her head of what it might feel like, kissing another girl._

_Waverly is fourteen years old._

— 

Waverly has Wynonna and Nicole and Gus and Dolls and, yes, even Doc, and her world feels full. Things are _good_.

They’re breaking the curse one Revenant at a time, just like Waverly always wanted, and she and Nicole can’t keep their hands off of each other, which is a newer desire, but it burns every bit as bright. 

Everything is fantastic, actually.

Until Willa comes home.

Wynonna and Willa pick up right where they left off, and Waverly feels like she’s been cut right out of the fabric of her own family, even if Wynonna doesn’t realize that it’s happening. God, it hurts.

She listens in the barn, and they laugh and lean against one another, and they might as well be standing against the door frame, with Daddy marking their height, while Waverly huddles in the dark and wishes that she was one of them. Only this time, she knows _exactly_ why it makes her cry.

She doesn’t tell Nicole. They’re still so new to each other, and it’s not fair to make their new relationship sag under the burden of Waverly’s insecurities. If she were as smart as everyone says she is, she’d know that Nicole can see it anyway, and that it makes her brow crease and her dimples smooth when Waverly isn’t looking.

She wants to withdraw. She wants to give up and go hide and wait for the world to move on. She wants to go back to before, when she was planning to take up the mantle herself and preparing herself for it by writing papers all night on ancient druidic rituals and medieval relics.

But Dolls sits at her kitchen table and calls her _Earp_ and tells her that he needs her just as much as he needs Wynonna, and it means everything to her, having his respect. It’s different than love, she thinks, but that’s okay, because when has love ever not left her broken? 

It’s a bright, shining moment — one that she’ll hold onto long after Dolls is taken from them — but it’s only a flash, one tender moment, and then it’s shattered by the grenade that gets lobbed through their window. Suddenly, Dolls is flipping the table and barking orders for her to get down and hide, and _why does everyone think she needs protecting_?  

She can hold her own with a shotgun, and she does for a second, making one of those shit-tickets run for cover. And then she gets a little bit shot.

Willa goes AWOL, running after the assailants, and Waverly can see the conflict on Wynonna’s face. Of course. Willa is Wynonna’s big sister, and they _just_ got her back. Of course Waverly tells Wynonna to go after her. She _has_ to.

Besides, Dolls is here. If anyone can stop her from bleeding out, it’s him.  

When Wynonna runs out the door, there’s a tiny eight-year-old voice in Waverly’s head whispering _there’s always someone more important, always someone that will make them leave_ , and she believes it, because it’s always been true.

But this time, oh _this_ time, she whispers back, _Then I’ll be here when they come back_ , and it fills her with hope and strength and love. Because the people she loves, they can leave — they _will_ leave, she knows by now — but she can stay, and she _does_. That’s her power, and she knows it. She’s had a lifetime to perfect it, and she’s really fucking good at it now.

She _knows_ that Wynonna will come back. And Waverly will be here for her when she does.

She does feel a little silly when she sees the wound later, because she thought she’d been saying her goodbyes, but it turns out there’s a mild rash from the graze and that’s about it.

But still, she got _shot_.

—

_She and Chrissy don’t stop being friends, not exactly._

_But Chrissy is spending a lot of her time with Robin Jett, and Waverly is spending a lot of her time working in Shorty’s so she can save up for a car. And Champ Hardy ends up spending a lot of time at the bar in Shorty’s, even though he’s too young to drink. He eats onion rings and drinks Coke and pushes Waverly against the wall after her shift one night._

_“Champ,” Waverly giggles, sliding her hands up around his neck._

_“I like you,” he tells her, and she believes him._

_She lets him kiss her in the stockroom when Shorty isn’t looking._

_When she gets home later, her lips still burning from Champ’s kisses, Gus informs her that Wynonna has run away from the asylum. They’re looking for her, but there aren’t any leads. They just can’t find her._

_Waverly huddles in her bedroom and cries against her knees._

_After all this time apart, it feels like she’s lost her sister._ **_Again_** _._

_Waverly is fifteen years old._

—

Wynonna does come back, of course, and Waverly knows without a shadow of a doubt that Wynonna loves her. It’s just… being the Heir is a big job. And Wynonna needs the space and the freedom to be able to do it, without her baby sister weighing her down.

She promises Wynonna that she’s fine.

And she is.

Or, she will be.

Nicole, though. Waverly couldn’t keep Nicole away if she wanted to. Once she hears that Waverly’s been shot, she’s at the Homestead as soon as she can get out there, checking Waverly’s vitals and changing her bandages. Nicole doesn’t even kiss her properly until Waverly tugs at her and snaps her out of it.

“I appreciate that you’re taking care of me, but I’m _fine_ , and I’d really rather be kissing you right now,” Waverly murmurs, and Nicole grins.

“I’m pretty stoked that I get to just do that now,” Nicole admits, leaning into her.

Each time they kiss, Waverly can feel her body crying for more, and she knows she’s getting closer and closer to wanting Nicole’s mouth and hands on her in other ways. She doesn’t want to think about what that means, emotionally, for them, not while she’s still waiting for Nicole to realize that being with an Earp is too dangerous and weird, and pull the emergency eject lever.

A feeling that Waverly knows all too well grips hard on her heart, but she refuses to look it in the eye.

When Nicole walks away, it will be easier if she pretends she didn’t see it sitting there.

—

_It’s the greatest night of her life, being crowned prom queen._

_She stands up on the stage under the balloon arch, and smiles into the spotlight and cheers of her friends, and when Champ pulls her into a slow dance, she feels like a princess all over again._

_“How about tonight?” Champ whispers to her, and she ducks her head against him, hiding her blush._

_It’s not the first time he’s asked, but she was just crowned high school royalty, and Stephanie Jones talks all the time about how great it is. She_ **_has_ ** _been with Champ since she was fifteen. She loves him. Right?_

_So she nods shyly, and Champ whoops and picks her up, spins her around, right there on the dance floor._

_They’re taking a big step, and she should be thrilled, but here in the gym, surrounded by a hundred of her classmates and spinning in her boyfriend’s muscular arms, Waverly Earp has never felt lonelier in her whole life._  

_Chrissy and Robin both give her a hug before Champ pulls her out the door by her hand and whisks her away in his pickup truck._

_His folks aren’t home, he tells her, and she follows him into the dark house, and then into his bedroom, and then into his bed._

_It’s not… terrible. It hurts a bit, and she has no idea what she’s doing, but Champ seems to like it well enough, and then he’s lying next to her, his chest rising and falling deeply in sleep. In a way, it’s over before she even really has a chance to get used to it. She lies next to him, blinking up at the ceiling in the dark, and wonders why Stephanie Jones is always talking about how great sex is._

_It’s disappointing, but it’s fine. They’re together, and they’re both adults, and she loves him. So she stays in bed and listens to him breathe and wonders where Wynonna is and if she’s okay._

_Waverly is eighteen years old._

— 

Wynonna shoots Willa, and Waverly watches Wynonna retreat.

Physically, she sleeps downstairs and leaves her towel on the floor and never makes more coffee when she’s taken the last cup. But emotionally, she’s packed up and gone around the world again.

Waverly has no choice but to wait for her to come home.

It’s okay.

Waiting for her people to come back to her is kind of what she does. She’s good at it.

Well, she _thinks_ she’s good at it...

But then Nicole is so pissed at her for cutting her out of Black Badge that she can’t even _look_ at Waverly, much less talk to her, and Waverly finds herself wondering after days of unanswered texts and Nicole avoiding her at the station if they’re even still dating. 

“Please don’t shut me out,” she pleads with Nicole, and when Nicole slams the door shut behind her, Waverly feels like it’s a door that will never open again.

She sobs all the way home, Mikshun’s victorious laughter ringing in her ears.

—

_“Happy graduation, baby girl,” Wynonna says from the doorway. Waverly spins, almost dropping the plate she’s placing on the table._

_“Wynonna!” Her face erupts into sunshine, and she crosses the dining room and throws her arms around her sister’s neck._

_“I was at your graduation,” Wynonna says. “I thought maybe you’d be there. Weren’t you supposed to give a big speech or something?”_

_Waverly rolls her eyes. “I was with Champ. Not everything is about school.”_

_“Excuse me, hold up. Champ Hardy? You skipped your high school graduation to hang out with that rodeo clown?”_

_“You know he ropes calves,” Waverly says dryly. “Did you come back here after all this time to berate my boyfriend?”_

_“No, of course not.” Wynonna pulls her into another hug. “I wanted to see my baby sister again before I leave the country.”_

_Waverly shoves her back, her eyes glinting. “You’re leaving? You just got here.”_

_“Yeah, I can’t stay. I’m heading out tomorrow.”_  

_“You’re unbelievable, Wynonna.”_

_“Hey, at least I came to see you first.”_  

_“Right,” Waverly says, grabbing another plate for the table. “And how many times will this make, you leaving?”_

_“What are you doing?”_

_“Nothing.” Waverly blinks. “Sit down. You’re staying for dinner, at least.”_

_Waverly is eighteen years old._

—

Mikshun is _everywhere_ , and Waverly mourns the days when she thought being lonely was the worst fate in the world. Turns out, sharing your body with a tentacle-goo demon? Pretty high up there on the list of things that suck donkey balls.

The only time she gets any reprieve whatsoever is when she’s with Nicole.

It drives her crazy, not knowing why. Maybe Nicole is a supernatural being herself. Maybe she’s not at all, but she’s so incredibly grounded that Waverly can’t help but be grounded when they’re together. Whatever the case, Nicole Haught is Waverly’s very own private brand of Demon-Be-Gone, and she makes the most out of it, despite the whispers deep in her mind that Nicole will leave her, alone and hurting and raw, just like everyone else.  

It’s not until Nicole brings Waverly documents to fill out to try and figure out if she’s an Earp that Waverly is starting to believe that Nicole might actually stick around.

Nicole looks down at her and says, “As long as you want me, I’ll be by your side,” and it sounds an awful lot like _forever_ to Waverly. She knows better, but she can’t help digging her fingers into it and holding on for dear life. Maybe Nicole will walk away, but right now, she has _always_ in her eyes, and Waverly clings to it like a life vest in the middle of the sea.

She knows now that she can’t keep herself from this any longer. Either Nicole will stay or she won’t, but there is no protecting herself from her feelings, not anymore. 

She looks at the thing coiled around her heart, the thing with roots that Nicole has been tending, and it beats in time perfectly, reverently, with Nicole’s own heart. It’s been there for ages, maybe since the first time Nicole took her hand, but Waverly can’t name it out loud. She _can’t_. But she can lay herself bare and show Nicole that it’s there, that it beats for her.

Actions are… irrefutable. They’re better than words. Stronger. They last in the memory long after words fade. Actions are what lives are built of, and Waverly wants to build hers with Nicole.  

She knows now that she loves Nicole Haught with all of her heart. There’s no denying it, not to herself or to Nicole, and she wants Nicole in her bed so she can _show_ her what it looks like. Actions over words, building a life together.

She _wants_ to tell Nicole, she does, but when she opens her mouth, her consent comes out, but her “I love you” sticks in the back of her throat, and comes out sounding more like “I… I like you,” instead. It’ll have to do, for now.

This is the one protection she still has, the one card she still holds. If she can keep that close to her vest, maybe she can keep this woman for a while longer. Maybe they could even build that lifetime together, if Waverly doesn’t say the words that will break the spell.

It seems like it _is_ enough for Nicole, because she lifts Waverly so easily and lays her down so gently that Waverly can scarcely breathe.

“I don’t know how to do this,” Waverly whispers with Nicole hovering over her, and Nicole makes a soothing sound.

“You’ll learn,” she says. “I’ll show you.” Waverly arches up, trying for some contact, and Nicole gets her attention. “We can stop at any time, Waves. I won’t be mad if you say ‘no,’ okay?” 

“I want you,” Waverly says.

“Yeah?” Nicole presses a kiss to her neck, and Waverly shivers. 

“I didn’t think you’d come back.” 

Nicole pushes herself up, and the look on her face is intense. “What?”

Waverly shrugs. “I thought that maybe we were done. Well, that _you_ were.”

Nicole half rolls and supports herself on her elbow. Her other hand is feather-light on Waverly’s stomach. “Waverly, I need to say something before we go any further, and I need you to hear me, okay?” She waits until Waverly nods, her hand tracing delicate patterns across Waverly’s skin. “I meant what I said about being here for as long as you want me. Unless you tell me to, I won’t leave you. Ever.”

“Nicole.”

“Yes?”

“You can’t possibly know…”

“I do. I know.”

“But everyone does, eventually. Leaves.”

“Look, I don’t know the future. But I know that this is an insecurity for you, and I’m doing my best to be vulnerable and transparent so that you can see that I’m serious. I don’t ever want to leave you, Waves, not even if there’s demons, or…”

“Or?”

“Or if it’s just our own humanity, and we have another fight. Because we probably will. Being in a relationship can be bumpy sometimes, and even if it gets that way with us, I will _always_ come back to you. Unless you tell me not to.” Even now, Waverly has no idea how Nicole manages to be so strong and so soft at the same time.

“You will?” 

Nicole smooths a finger along Waverly’s brow. “I will. No matter what.”

Waverly bites her lip and gives a short tug on Nicole’s dangling belt to pull her closer. “Good. But I think if you don’t touch me right now, Nicole, I might actually die,” she says, and Nicole laughs, a musical lilt that warms Waverly all over.

“Be patient, baby. We have all the time in the world.”

 _We don’t_ , Waverly wants to say. _We really don’t_. 

“It’s been _days_ ,” is what Waverly breathes instead, and the air around them hums. “Since you’ve…”

Nicole kisses her then, like she can’t bear to be apart anymore either, and the fire builds between them so fast it sucks all the breath out of Waverly’s lungs and turns it into flame. 

When Nicole breathes again against Waverly’s lips, she says, “Tell me what you want,” and Waverly’s eyes flutter.   

“You want me to…”

“Talk to me,” Nicole confirms. “The more you tell me what you like, the better this will be.”

Waverly _has_ to close her eyes after that, if only for a moment, just to try and get the ground back underneath her. She can feel Nicole waiting, stroking her hair, patient as ever.

“No one’s ever asked me that before,” Waverly says without opening her eyes.

“Hey,” Nicole says, impossibly soft, her fingers on Waverly’s chin. “You’re with me now. _I’m_ asking.” When Waverly finally opens her eyes and looks up, the warmest smile is waiting for her. “Nothing’s ever gonna be more important to me than what you need, Wave, especially when we’re in this room.”

There are a million things fluttering around inside of Waverly’s chest, but for the first time in weeks, her head is perfectly clear.

“Kiss me,” she says firmly, and Nicole grins. 

“That’s more like it.”

Waverly figures out pretty quickly that Nicole likes it when she’s vocal. She likes it a _lot._  

So she instructs and reacts and lets Nicole take her time. And then Waverly doesn’t say much of anything at all because Nicole Haught is making her body _sing._

And for now, just for now, Waverly’s world narrows down to one person, and it’s the most free she’s ever felt in her whole life. It’s just her and Nicole and soft skin and softer sighs, and for once in Waverly’s life, the world does not feel too small.

—

For the next several weeks, Waverly is in and out of control. There are long gaps that she doesn’t remember, and during all of it, she clings more tightly to Nicole whenever she can, desperate to feel herself for as long as possible.

But whenever Nicole can’t be there, can’t save her, Waverly loses herself to the darkness. She wonders if it qualifies as dramatic irony that Wynonna has no idea the devil is sleeping upstairs, even though this isn’t a story; it’s her life. It’s not some clever little twist, but a bitter waking nightmare. She cries into her pillow at night, reminded in words that feel like ice water against her ribs that the only one to ever really be with her forever is this thing living inside of her.

 _I’ll never leave you_ , it whispers in the dark, and for the first time in her life, Waverly Earp would rather be alone.

—

Mikshun takes Wynonna instead, and it’s a bitter relief, this time, to be be abandoned. 

But Wynonna bends and cracks under the weight of it, and Waverly knows — she _knows_ — that Wynonna is the only one that can save them. She’s never had any choice in the part she has to play in this. So she takes Mikshun back, and loses herself once more.

Wynonna saves her. Of course she does. She’s a hero. The Heir. Her _sister_.

It’s not until this moment, with Nicole cradling her up off the floor of the barn and Wynonna hovering in the background, waiting to help Waverly get inside and get warm, that Waverly accepts that Wynonna might actually be sticking around this time, too.

It’s a relief, in more ways than one.

The easy thing would have been for Wynonna to just let the Order handle it, or to end it with Peacemaker outright, a single bullet right between Waverly’s eyes, but her sister had _fought_ for her. She’d stood her ground and put herself on the line, and that feels like everything to Waverly.

Everything else, they can figure out together.

—

When Waverly wakes up again, after the clockmaker stops time, Wynonna is pregnant. Like, _really_ pregnant.

Waverly can see the breakdown coming before it ever hits, and Wynonna collapses on the floor, half on Waverly’s lap. Waverly holds her and lets her cry, because this is her sister, her only family remaining besides Gus, and it’s always been them versus the world, even when Wynonna ran away, even when Willa distracted her.

She’s the one who sang with Mama over Waverly’s lonely birthday cake. She’s the one who pulled Waverly from the frozen lake and hauled her home to sit by the fire in the potbelly woodstove.

She doesn’t understand any of this, and she doubts she ever will, but she knows one thing without a shadow of a doubt — Waverly Earp doesn’t do the leaving.

“I’m not saying it’s going to be okay,” Waverly tells her, stroking Wynonna’s hair and catching her tears. “I’m saying… I’m here.”

Waverly holds her until the tears have dried, and Wynonna sleeps.

It’s not until later, once they’ve sent Wynonna’s one night stand screaming back to hell, that they have a minute to discuss how Wynonna actually _feels_ about everything. 

If Waverly didn’t know better, she’d almost think that Wynonna is excited, especially when she tells Waverly that she wants her to teach the baby all out their history, what it means to be an Earp.

Auntie Waverly.

Waverly couldn’t stop the tears if she wanted to.

“I don’t think I’m your sister, or even an Earp at all,” she tells Wynonna, her loneliness finally welling up and spilling out to splash down into her tea.

“Where is this coming from?” Wynonna says after a long time. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Waverly says dully.

“Like hell it doesn’t.”

“I believe him.”

“You believe _who_?”

“Bobo.”

Wynonna’s up and down the stairs in a flash, her arms around Waverly, trapping her mug and Wynonna’s pregnant belly between them. Waverly squeaks with the force of it, but she buries her face in Wynonna’s shoulder and takes the comfort that’s offered.

“Whatever he told you, whether he’s right or wrong, you’re my _sister_ , Waverly. Do you hear me? I’ll burn the world down before I let anyone hurt you.”  

Waverly nods and a fresh batch of tears choke out, but this time, Wynonna is the one that does the catching.

—

It can’t last.

It never fucking _lasts_ , except this time, oh god, _this_ time, it’s Waverly who’s walking out.

She’s never walked away from a person she loves in her whole life, especially not one she loves as much as she loves Nicole, but this whole situation twists in her gut like a knife. 

“Waverly, wait!” Nicole calls after her, broken, and Waverly’s voice is steady when she throws back, “Don’t follow me,” before slamming the door. 

The DNA results. She’d lied to her.

How could she?

How _could_ she? 

 _Because I love you_ Nicole’s voice echoes, and a sob chokes up Waverly’s throat. She makes it to her Jeep before the tears splash hot down her face. She stomps the gas, kicks up gravel in the bar parking lot, and spins out down the road, driving through the blur of tears.

The first time Nicole says those words, and they’re… foul. Manipulative.

Waverly _hates_ those words. 

Love isn’t about what comes out of your mouth. You can say anything, tell anyone anything, and it costs nothing. Love, real love, is about your choices. How you behave. How you _treat_ the person you love.

And Nicole’s actions— She hid this from Waverly. She _lied_. She knew how important this was to her, and she still.... She’s glad she hasn’t said those words to Nicole. She was right to wait.

 _This is what always happens._  

Waverly slams on the brakes, swerves to a stop, and wrenches the door open in time to vomit tequila out onto the street.

She closes the door, wipes her mouth with the back of a trembling hand. 

The steering wheel presses a hard line across her forehead, and she breathes and cries and thinks. She shouldn’t be driving. She pulls out her phone to call… _Shit_. She doesn’t have anyone else.

“You don’t lie to the people you love,” she says out loud, to her empty Jeep.

Alone again.

She lets the taste of liquor evaporate on her tongue and then hits Dolls’s name in her contact list.

—

Three days.

It’s been three days, and Waverly has ignored every text, every phone call, every voicemail.

 _Liar_ , she thinks when she sees Nicole’s name pop up on her lockscreen.

When they run into each other at the station, Waverly is downright mean, and Nicole instantly goes stony. She shuts right down and refuses to even look Waverly in the eye, her jaw muscles working with the clenching of her teeth. If Waverly weren’t so angry and aiming all of the disappointment she feels at not being an Earp at Nicole, she might even feel bad for hurting her. But, right now, she’s still a long ways out from that.

They find a body in the woods. Tucker Gardner. And when his sister Beth comes in to deal with the body, Waverly finds herself in a side room, just the two of them, talking about grief. She slips into her town sweetheart routine so easily, it doesn’t even occur to her that she’d slipped out of it somewhere along the way.

“I know what you’re going through,” Waverly tells her, and she does. She knows. This is very familiar territory for her.

“Your father… your sister… How are you not bitter?” Beth asks.

“I have my moments,” Waverly says wryly. Beth Gardner has no idea how hard she has just hammered the nail on the head, and Waverly can feel the bitterness ruffle up inside of her.

It seems like it’s the only thing she feels lately. Well, that and anger.

And when Nicole brings in a cup of water for Beth, both of those things overflow and flood out in Nicole’s direction. 

Waverly cannot believe how Nicole is behaving towards Beth, cold and callous, speaking horribly about her brother when his body is lying out on a table. It’s enough to make Beth get up and walk out, and Waverly doesn’t blame her.

“Sometimes lying is a kindness,” she tells Nicole.

“I tried that with you, and look at us now,” Nicole says, and it’s only in this moment that Waverly can see the toll that her cruelty is taking. It’s too much. Three days ago, they were so in love. Weren’t they? It all seems like a dream now, one that Waverly is desperate to hold onto, but the more she wakes up, the more she can feel it slipping away. Neither of them have actually said the words, but Waverly knows how she felt, and Nicole has never been any good at hiding how much she adores Waverly. She’d be terrible at poker, Doc had told her once, and she’d just grinned and said “Thank you, Henry,” and pressed a kiss to Waverly’s cheek.

Suddenly, it’s not just anger all wound up in Waverly’s chest. There’s so much _pain_ there, too, that Waverly can’t even look in Nicole’s eyes anymore. She can feel her chin wavering, and she fights to hold her heartache in. It’s too much. It’s going to spill over, until Waverly gets a hard grip on it and wrestles it back into place. 

“You know what I’d never do? Tell you what to think or feel.”

There. That’s a great line to leave on, and now Nicole knows that Waverly is _not_ over her betrayal. 

 _I will_ **_always_ ** _come back to you, unless you tell me not to_ echoes in Waverly’s mind, and she makes it to the bathroom before she breaks down in tears.

She’s got sadness in spades, but it’s the text message she sends Nicole later at the spa that truly snaps her out of her rage. It’s … awful. She knows the moment she sends it, and now there’s no taking it back.

 _Have a nice life hurting the people you love._  

It sounds a lot like a breakup text. Oh god, did she just break up with Nicole? 

Waverly can actually see Nicole’s face as she reads it, first tearful horror and then with abject passivity, the stony mask sliding into place, blocking Waverly out for good.

They’ll never come back from this.

So she kisses Rosita, and spends most of the night drowning her sorrows over it. Nicole may be a liar, but Waverly Earp is a cheater, and it breaks the tether to the last bit of hope that was floating inside of her. 

They’re over.

They’re over before they even really got started.

She’d told Nicole to fuck off and then kissed another woman, and there’s no way they’re coming back from this. It’s beyond forgivable.

They’re _over_ , and it’s all Waverly’s fault.

Surprisingly, it’s Rosita who pours her a drink in the wee hours of the morning and talks some sense into her.

“Go. Talk to her. She’ll open the door for you,” Rosita says. “No matter the time.”

Waverly drives to Nicole’s house with Rosita’s words on a loop in her brain, to see if there’s any hope left for the two of them. But Nicole isn’t alone when Waverly gets there. Her door is wide open, and she’s broken on the floor, dragging herself away from the Widow that looks like Mercedes. They fight, together, side by side, but the Widow is too strong, and she bites Nicole and leaves Waverly to deal with the aftermath. 

And it’s so much worse than them being over, because if Nicole had just left her, she’d still be alive. She wouldn’t be Waverly’s anymore, but she’d still be walking around and laughing and helping people instead of lying here in Waverly’s lap, blood dripping down her forearm, dying gasp by painful gasp in Waverly’s arms.

If Nicole dies, if she leaves Waverly alone in the world… If Waverly never gets to see her smile again, or tip her hat, or lean against the bar to order a beer… 

Waverly does the only thing she can. She holds Nicole and calls for help and begs her not to die.  

— 

In what universe is this fair? 

The love of Waverly’s life is dying, and Wynonna just expects Waverly to sit around and wait. She’s done enough of that, thank-you-very-much. Why can’t _she_ be the protector, for once?

She’s not some damsel in distress. She can do things, too.

She’s there, by Nicole’s side in an instant, and Nicole is saying her goodbyes. Nicole knows that she’s dying, and Waverly’s heart cracks slowly, a faultline running straight through, that will eventually bring the whole thing down into a pile of rubble.  
  
“I have never loved anyone the way that I love you,” Nicole says, and Waverly knows she means these to be her last words. The crack in Waverly’s heart deepens and splits it straight down the middle, and now there are two halves, barely beating inside her chest.

Waverly feels like she’ll never breathe again. “You know what? Nope. We’re not doing this,” she says through her own tears. She can’t.

She _can’t_.

And then Nicole’s drugs kick in, and she slumps back against the pillow. _At least she’s out of pain,_  Waverly tells herself.

It’s a situation that can’t get any worse.

Until Nicole’s emergency contact turns up, all dark skin and perfect smokey eyes and glossy black hair. 

Shae. 

Turns out, Nicole has a wife. A gorgeous, smart, doctor wife, who apparently likes to travel and climb and do all sorts of things that Waverly has never done. Like get married.

Nicole’s doctor asks if she has any drug allergies, and Waverly answers quickly, surely, “No.”

“Yes. Thiopental could kill her. Give her Propofol,” Shae says, and in a second, saves her life when Waverly might have unwittingly taken it from her. 

She’s already pretty beaten down, but not knowing about this allergy could have _killed_ Nicole, when all she wants is to save her, and this extra hard slap in the face is the thing that actually knocks her out of the hospital.

She thought Nicole was the love of her life, and the last few hours made her think that maybe — _maybe_ — she was the love of Nicole’s, too,  but… how can you be that in love with someone and not tell them that you’re married?

It all seems like a bad dream, a sinister joke. 

A bizarre hell dimension that’s exploiting every single one of Waverly’s insecurities perfectly. 

God, this must be what going crazy feels like.

_How do you even know what’s true anymore?_

She can’t die _and_ be married to someone else.

“I get that you want to hurt me,” she grumbles to the universe once she’s outside, “but, jeez, pick a lane.” 

—

She’s done being the damsel.

She’s done having this enormous heart and being punished for loving people with it.

She’s _done_.

So she makes the deal with Gretta Perley, and Wynonna Earp, her sister, the _Heir_ , vanishes from history.

—

She falls in love with Nicole all over again, here, in this world without Wynonna. How could she not? 

Brave, sweet Nicole who comes alive each day when Waverly brings her chicken salad. Nicole, who hates pickles apparently, but wants them anyway as long as Waverly is the one bringing them. (Thank you for that, Lonnie, you big, too-loud lug.)

She sits on Nicole’s desk and toys with Nicole’s ring. It’s a simple touch, but it means something to Waverly, even if she doesn’t recognize exactly what it is just yet. Something in the back of Waverly’s brain nudges her, and she twists her hands and says, “I’d be a fool not to marry him, right?” She has no idea what makes her ask, and here she is, asking Sheriff Haught of all people. “I kind of feel like I’m running towards a cliff, terrified of jumping…” she tries to explain.

“Well, if it’s right,” Sheriff Haught — _Nicole_ — says breathlessly, “you don’t think about the cliff because you’re sure when you reach the edge, you’ll fly.”

And, god, she’s so open and easy that Waverly feels like Nicole has taken her own heart out and laid it before Waverly on the desk between them, beating and hopeful and waiting for Waverly to claim it as her own. It steals her breath, and she looks into Nicole’s eyes and can’t believe that she didn’t see it before, the pure devotion that she finds there.

Lonnie interrupts them, and Waverly can see Nicole’s irritation. She feels it herself, but it’s overshadowed by relief, because Perry is waiting outside for her and she has his ring on her finger and no idea what to do with the feelings that Nicole has just laid in her lap. 

It’s confusing enough that when Perry goes to kiss her hello, she presses the kiss to his cheek instead. 

God, what is going on with her?

And then Doc Holiday dies, and when Nicole comes to get her, she cries _so_ hard, like the town she’s lived in her whole life hasn’t been tortured by him for as long as she’s been alive. She cries over him, and she asks Nicole what’s wrong with her. 

The air in Nicole’s cruiser is charged between them, like the air before a storm, just before the lightning strikes. There’s not a doubt in Waverly’s mind now what this means. It’s attraction, pure and simple, and she knows by the way that she wants to give Perry’s kiss to Nicole that Nicole isn’t the only one who feels it.

So, she flirts. It’s just in order to get the Iron Witch’s address, she tells herself. It’s a means to an end. She’s marrying Perry. She’s in an actual wedding dress, for god’s sake, her _mother’s_ wedding dress, and he’s off, running last minute errands for the wedding. And she’s here, next to Nicole, and Nicole smells like vanilla dipped donuts, but it doesn’t mean anything. A little harmless flirting never hurt anyone.

It’s too much though, because Nicole completely forgets herself when Waverly asks, “You do that for me?” and answers, “I’d do a lot of things to you,” like this is something they’ve done before.  

“For… _for_ me,” Waverly corrects, and it seems like Nicole has only just realized that she’d said it out loud, that they aren’t this comfortable with one another. That Waverly is just the town sweetheart who brings her lunch every day at noon on the dot and not someone she can hint about this type of intimacy with. She doesn’t seem _sorry_ , though, not exactly, and it kicks Waverly’s pulse into overdrive, this thing between them, and suddenly all she can think about is climbing into Nicole’s lap and giving her permission to show Waverly just what types of things she has in mind. 

She decides right then and there that she’s not married yet, and she opens her heart to listen, to really listen to what it wants. She’s left reeling with a flash in her mind of a lithe body hovering over her, pinning her to the bed, red hair hanging down like a curtain around her face, and the flush that comes with such a vision.

It’s not only welcome, it’s… familiar. Like a memory and not a fantasy, but that’s crazy, right? She and Nicole have never been anything more than friends. So, how can she see Nicole’s flush so clearly, remember what the inside of her mouth tastes like? It’s impossible.

They go to see Gretta, and she pulls back the veil, and for just a second, Waverly knows _why_.

Because Nicole is it for her. Because they belong together. Because she loves Nicole Haught so fiercely that she’d unwritten her own sister from existence for the mere chance to extend her life.

She’s in shock when she says, out loud, “I betrayed her because I love you,” or she never would have said it. The price she paid for Nicole’s life, to admit her love out loud like it’s nothing. It’s irresponsible. It’s _stupid_.

She’s so disappointed in herself, she doesn’t even see the look on Nicole’s face at hearing Waverly admit her love for the first time.

And then, it’s gone before it can settle, and she’s left with a hollowed-out feeling where the memory used to be, and this is _definitely_ familiar, this feeling that something’s been cut out of her. It’s with her for the rest of the day, riding along like a passenger on the back of her horse, its arms wrapped around her waist and its breath icy on her neck. 

—

Alice is ushered into the world by violence. 

The first time Waverly gazes into her niece’s face, her own is covered in blood, a token from Rosita bashing her head into the pool table. Lovely Rosita, who once had saved her, had kissed her, had told her that Nicole would open the door for her no matter the time. Rosita has saved _them_ , she’s fairly certain, and all she’s left behind in her wake is blood and betrayal.

But now Waverly’s world is one larger, stretching to accommodate this tiny little life, larger than the universe and swaddled in a blue blanket.

Her heart expands and makes room, and she welcomes Alice’s spark into it with more love than she knows what to do with.

Waverly’s wide new world doesn’t even last the afternoon. 

Alice has barely opened her eyes, and she’s leaving. And now Gus is gone too, gone to make a place safe for Alice, to keep her waiting for them. 

She still has Wynonna. And Nicole. Jeremy. Doc. Dolls.

Her world is still larger and more full of life than it ever has been, even though it’s missing Gus and Alice. She sits outside Shorty’s and sips her tea and laughs with Jeremy and kisses Nicole. 

She has so much love surrounding her that she doesn’t even think to ask herself where Wynonna or Doc ran off to until much, much later, when she and Nicole are all wound up and breathing softly against one another in bed.

—

“Happy birthday, Waverly Earp.”

“What?” Waverly looks up from her book and blinks.

Nicole is standing before her, an entire cake in her hands, lit ablaze with more candles than Waverly has ever seen in her life. It casts a warm glow up around Nicole’s face and throws shadows on the walls of the Homestead. Jeremy is behind Nicole, smiling. Doc and Wynonna are next to him, standing further apart than entirely necessary, and Dolls leans against the doorframe, arms crossed and grinning.

They sing to her, and it’s the first time in eighteen years Waverly has felt truly happy on her birthday.

“You got me a cake,” she says when they’re done singing, and Nicole laughs.

“Yep, we did. So make a wish, birthday girl.” Nicole leans over and kisses her. “There’s presents, too,” she whispers. “You’re not the only planner in this family.”

“Family?” Nicole sitting down next to her in the chair makes it come out as a squeak, and Nicole makes a gesture that means “all of us.” She does make a wish, then, with Nicole’s arm around her, and she leans further into Nicole’s side and closes her eyes to do it. She wishes for a way she could save her family from any more danger, any more pain. _A way to end the curse_ , she thinks.

She couldn’t know— how could she possibly?— that the roots in the earth were stirring all around them at that very instant, at the bidding of a dark master. One that would grant her wish within months.

—

When the demon takes her voice, out in the middle of the woods, it’s not even the worst thing she’s lost today.

Wynonna _knew_ where Mama was. For almost twenty years, she’d known and had lied to Waverly about it.

It’s a bitter pill to swallow, and it sticks in her throat where her voice should be.

Her own sister. Betrayed her. Her _entire_ life, she betrayed her.

Why can’t the people she loves see how capable she is?  She’s strong and smart and determined. She’s been training _so_ hard, taking this so seriously, and yet Wynonna and Nicole and Doc and Dolls all treat her like she’s this dainty, breakable thing, to be locked away, kept high on a shelf.

But Wynonna. 

Wynonna knew where Mama was. Wynonna _knew_ , and didn’t tell her.

She could have had a family, all this time, while Wynonna was running.

The rawness in her throat lasts for several days after her voice comes back, but Wynonna’s betrayal throbs in her heart far longer.

She doesn’t even really have time to deal with it now, anyway. Not when Dolls sacrifices himself to save them. He deals a huge blow to Bulshar, but in the process, he leaves them here to finish this without him, and it hardly seems worth it. Waverly does her best to keep herself together.

She’s so good at waiting for the people she loves to come back, but all she can think is _he’s not coming back_. He’s gone forever, and he’s left them here to carry on with this the best way they know how.

She allows herself a small window of grief, and she cries into her pillow, a lost and forgotten thing untethered in the world, but when she comes back downstairs, she’s Waverly again, gentleness and light, and she takes care of Wynonna and Nicole and the rest.

It’s what she does. 

She can grieve for herself, for what she’s lost, later.   

—

She goes to see Mama, and it’s worse than anything she could have imagined.

Mama didn’t forget her. Mama _hates_ her.

Calls her a demon. Spits on her.

All she wanted was…

 _It’s not really important now_ , she tells herself in her Jeep on the way home.

She might feel better if she could cry, but she thinks that maybe she’s used up all of her tears for this lifetime.

—

Waverly doesn’t remember Jolene from the woods, the playmate with whom she’d shared half her royal title, her woodland kingdom.

Jolene, her Jolene, has always been here. She’s been friends with Waverly since she can remember. She’s always had her otherworldly baked goods at the ready whenever any of them were down or sad or having a day. 

So Waverly can’t place why she feels so off right now, not when Jolene is over, and it looks like a Purgatory High bake sale in the Homestead kitchen. She has no right to feel this alone, surrounded by her family. She has so many people who love her now, so why does she feel like the only person in the whole world?

When she finds Mama in the barn, she’s even more confused. Mama who spit on her, Mama who tried to _kill_ her, here?

Once they get her in the house and get some of Jolene’s snickerdoodles in her, she evens out, and Waverly can breathe again. Thank god for Jolene.

—

Things are good.

Things are _really_ good, until Mama and Wynonna start making fun of her. And then Doc acts like talking to her is the worst torture he’s ever had to endure, and Waverly knows for a fact that he was at the bottom of a well for a hundred years. And then Nicole and Jolene start this… flirtation? She’s honestly not even sure what to think of it, but she’s never seen Nicole so much as look at another woman before, let alone half undress one in public, _in uniform_ , which is a hard boundary that Nicole has set for Waverly, but seems to be crossing herself all too happily.

It’s the last fucking straw, and Waverly snaps.

She doesn’t have a violent bone in her body, but something deep and red and raw just takes over and slaps her hand across Jolene’s face, right there in Shorty’s, in front of God and everybody.

And then all hell breaks loose, and Waverly finds herself not only at odds with Nicole, but with Mama and Doc and, god, even with Wynonna. And it’s not just them. It seems like everyone in Purgatory hates her, and it’s something she’s never experienced before, this loathing. These are people she’s known since she was a baby, people who voted her the nicest person here — a literal town-wide vote that won her an honest-to-god sash. She still has it, folded neatly in a box in her closet. 

It’s the worst she’s ever felt in her whole life, until the fight breaks up and she goes to see Nicole at the station. 

Fights and arguments, they’ve had those before, and they’d made Waverly feel awful. This… this is a whole other animal, the way that Nicole is acting. It’s not anger or frustration that Nicole is projecting, but something closer to _hate_. There’s so much venom in her words that it physically makes Waverly recoil. 

It’s never been like this between them, _never_ , and Waverly can feel the world she’s worked so hard to build slipping away from her.

The tears come freely, and Waverly wants to make this right, but now is clearly not the time.

“Can I call you later?” she asks tearfully. 

“Yeah, or don’t,” Nicole bites and walks away, just turns her back and leaves her there, and Waverly is so dumbfounded that she takes herself to the first out-of-the-way place she can find — a corner chair by the vending machine — and cries her heart out.

She’s tried — god, she’s tried _so hard_ — to make things better for herself, to change the hard things in her life, but the world just readjusts and puts her back down. Every damn time.

It’s all so fucking pointless. 

All she’s ever wanted, her whole life, is to have people, to have a world of love and safety and kindness, and now the only thing she can think about is finding a place where she can be alone. She needs space; she needs to be able to breathe. She finds herself in the greenhouse, but there’s no space for her, not even here.

Jolene bears down on her, berates her down into the literal dirt, and it’s down here, with Jolene’s knife in her hands and words in her heart that the memory of the girl in the woods crashes over her like a wave.

They’re joined. Of course they are. Connected. It makes perfect sense. If she could put an end to the darkness that she brings to everyone in her life, Jolene’s light would have a chance to shine through. They’d be better, without her.

Waverly doesn’t rush. She thinks about what Jolene is saying. She turns it over in her mind, examines it.

But… 

But that afternoon, in her bed with Nicole breathing words of love into her ear…

_Unless you tell me to, I won’t leave you. Ever._

Even after Waverly had sent her that awful text — _Have a nice life hurting the people you love_ — even then, Nicole had taken her back.

And Wynonna…

_I’ll burn the world down before I let anyone hurt you._

A light shines in the darkness, and Waverly grips tighter to the knife. “Wynonna loves me,” she says out loud, and the hold Jolene has on her loses its grip. “Yes, always. And despite what happened tonight, I _know_ that Nicole does, too. And Jeremy. Doc. Oh, Mama.” She’s crying freely now, but not out of self-pity or despair. She’s crying because she can see their light in the darkness, brighter than the candles on her birthday cake. Her family. “I’m here and I stay, and I _never_ give up on them.”

They come to save her, eventually, Wynonna and Mama. And she’s happy to see them, but in a way she’s already saved herself.

This shadow, this thing that has haunted her for her entire life has finally been banished, and she feels like maybe that’s the thing that was holding her back. She can feel the hope in the world again, like sunlight warm on the water, and it feels like spring, even though there’s snow on the ground.

Her mama never abandoned her, not like she thought. She’d been trying to protect Waverly all along.

She moves back into the Homestead, and Waverly feels the warmth and the light get stronger, turning into summer just in time for Christmas.

It’s the best Christmas Waverly has ever had in her whole life.

It’s seriously _perfect_. 

There’s food and music and they’ve dragged every single Christmas decoration and string of lights out of the barn, and the house looks like a miniature version of the North Pole, complete with Waverly’s very own elf.

Dear god, Nicole looks adorable. It’s such a change from her usual swagger, her badge and tie routine that is so sexy it sometimes has Waverly forgetting what it is that she’s supposed to be doing, but it’s nice, seeing this side of Nicole. She loves Christmas, and for all of her grumbling that she doesn’t get to play Santa, Waverly can see it in her eyes that she’s in her element. It’s about the holidays, sure, but there’s also something else underlying in her eyes that’s clear as the stars on a winter’s night when she talks about seeing the kids and making this a magical time for them. It makes Waverly’s heart swell with so much love, she hardly knows where to put it.

And then there’s Mama and her ridiculous turkey. Mama, who is back in their lives and giving them the love that they all had to do without for so long. 

Waverly looks at her family around the table and feels full to bursting with joy. It’s not a fleeting happiness, either, but a deep-seated contentment that she knows will be her standard for happiness for the rest of her life.

She sips her wine and stares at the empty chair at the table, allowing herself to think about who should be sitting there but isn’t. Because that’s part of her contentment, too, the love and loyalty that Dolls had brought to them, and it wouldn’t be right to feel this happy without remembering his part in it, even if it does leave an ache in her chest.

She sneaks away, for just a second, to call Gus.

“I wish you could be here,” Waverly says.

“Don’t you worry about that,” Gus tells her in that brusque way she has that always makes Waverly smile. “I got my very own Christmas star over here.” 

“How is she, Gus?” 

“She’s perfect, Waverly. Spittin’ image of her daddy, and sass like her mama. Got the light of her Aunt Waverly in her eyes, too.” 

“I miss you so much it hurts,” Waverly tells her, and she swears she can hear Gus crying.

“We’ll be together again soon, darlin’. I believe that.”

“I do, too.”

By the time Waverly slips back and folds herself into Nicole’s side, Wynonna and Mama are washing up the dishes while Doc chops wood outside. Jeremy scuffs his foot and holds up his phone.

“Uh-oh,” Waverly grins. “Did the bat signal go off?” 

Jeremy’s face blossoms into a smile. “I really don’t want to leave, but…”

“It’s okay,” Nicole says easily. “We’ll save you some leftovers.”

“Yeah, go get the boy.” Waverly presses a kiss to his cheek, and he pulls the both of them into a hug.

“Wish me luck,” he says on his way out the door.

“Like he needs it,” Nicole says, and Waverly giggles and pulls her by the hand up to her bedroom. 

Maybe it’s this time of year, or maybe it’s being surrounded by so much love, but whatever the reason, Waverly feels full of light. Maybe part of the light has something to do with the fact that she’s an angel. An honest-to-god _angel_. How is something like that even possible, when just a week ago, she was convinced that she was a demon that crawled out of the muck to slowly poison the lives of the people she loves.

Nicole isn’t even _remotely_ surprised when Waverly tells her.

“Maybe you’d better sit down.”

“Waves? Seriously, what is going on? You’re scaring me.”

“No, everything is fine, better than fine, it’s just… please sit down.” Nicole sits on the edge of the little couch that Waverly’s put in the corner of her room. “God, I don’t even know how to say something like this.”

“Waverly. Just tell me.”

“Okay.” She looks at Nicole, wrings her hands, bites her lip. “I’m an angel.”

The apprehension on Nicole’s face dissolves into a warm smile. “Baby. That’s not news.” 

“No, Nicole. I’m an _actual_ angel. Well, half-angel. My father was... is? I don’t know. He’s an angel, too.” Waverly gives a little hop, still wringing her hands. “I’m literally angelic.” The look on Nicole’s face doesn’t change, and Waverly’s face falls. “You’re not even the tiniest bit surprised?” 

“Baby.” Nicole takes Waverly’s hand and pulls her into her lap with such power that Waverly laughs breathlessly and says _Nicole!_ and grabs her shoulders to steady herself. “Your sister sends demons to hell with a magic gun. Do you think anything surprises me anymore?”

“But…”

Nicole presses a soft kiss to her lips. 

“I’d honestly be far more shocked to hear that you’re _not_ an angel, Waverly.” The look in Nicole’s eyes is dead serious, and Waverly forgets how to breathe.

“How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Keep so calm when everything is so crazy.” 

“Ah. Well,” she kisses Waverly again, longer this time. “I’m doing something that I _love_ with my life, in a place that I really like. I’m making a difference here, and that’s important to me. I have an amazing family and a hotter-than-hell girlfriend, who is somehow also the sweetest girl on the planet. It’s all about perspective.” 

Waverly will never forget the way that Nicole’s eyes are shining in this moment. She shifts in Nicole’s lap and drags the tip of her nose up Nicole’s throat to trace the shell of her ear. “You know,” Waverly breathes, “even angels can get up to no good.”

Waverly kind of loves it when she can make Nicole go still like this, like she’s trying not to spook a deer, waiting to see what Waverly will do.

She swallows, and there’s a connection between them that calls to Waverly, always, but right now, in this moment, it’s especially loud.

“No good?” Nicole echoes thickly. 

“Mhm,” Waverly says, kissing Nicole’s neck. She can’t resist using her teeth, just a little, and when Nicole’s grip tightens on her thighs, she knows she’s in control. 

She pulls back and gives Nicole her most devilish smile. “Wait. Here.”

Nicole sinks back into the couch so pliantly that Waverly _almost_ abandons her plan.

But she’s had this in the works for weeks, and everything’s ready, and this is the perfect moment, so she pushes herself up off of Nicole’s lap and saunters into her closet, swinging her hips as she goes. She doesn’t have to turn around to know that Nicole’s eyes are on her every step of the way.

It takes her a lot longer than she means it to, but getting everything just right in this outfit is important, and there’s no mirror in the closet to help her. By the time she pushes the door open, Nicole has collapsed on the couch in a sort of post-turkey coma, and Waverly’s resolve wobbles. She looks down at her outfit. She’s _really_ gone all out, and Nicole is clearly more interested right now in relaxing, and _god, why did she ever think this was a good idea?_

She thinks about ducking back in to change, but it’s too late. Nicole sees her, a million questions in her eyes, and says, “Baby? What’s going on?”

And Waverly doubles down. 

It’s not the sexy dance she was planning. She’s dreamed for weeks of seducing Nicole in this way, but fantasy sometimes doesn’t line up with reality, and what they’re left with is something much stronger: _them_. 

She dances, singing softly to accompany herself, and watches Nicole watching her. It’s not the lustful gaze she’d imagined for this moment, but a deep affection. An appreciation that is so very Nicole that Waverly forgets for a moment that she’s supposed to be seducing.

She collapses into Nicole, a bundle of nerves and embarrassment, and all she can think is _oh my god, you hate it_. 

“I don’t hate it. Of course I don’t,” Nicole promises, and Waverly tries to continue with her dance, but she really only wants Nicole. So she pulls her up and leads her to the bed, and Nicole follows, arranging herself on the edge so that Waverly can climb into her lap again. 

Now would be the perfect moment to say it.

She loves Nicole with all of her heart, she trusts her with her life. But she still can’t do it.

She kisses her instead, and Nicole responds immediately, pulling Waverly closer with her hands at Waverly’s waist.

“You make me feel things,” Waverly says, and Nicole’s fingers dig in. Nicole shivers and lets Waverly push her down on the bed.

“Tell me,” she says in a voice that’s no longer so solid Waverly could set her feet on it.

“You love it when I talk to you,” Waverly says, moving her hands down over Nicole’s body. “In bed.”

“I love it,” Nicole agrees in a broken voice and rolls up into Waverly’s hand. “I fuck— god, Waverly, I fucking _love_ it.”

And then Waverly lays across her body and breathes such things into her ear that Nicole is crying out in a matter of minutes. 

It’s perfect. It’s the perfect day. It’s the perfect _week_.

And Waverly lets herself get lost in it and forgets. She forgets how easy it is for everything to fall apart.

But when she sees Mama’s letters on the table, she remembers. She doesn’t even have to open the one that says “Waverly” on it to know.

Christmas is over.

—

It’s been weeks, but it still hurts. Mama left. _Again_. And this time, she can’t justify it by claiming that she’s trying to protect Waverly. No, this time, Waverly recognizes it for the selfish action that it is, and at Doc’s encouragement, no less. Her world is shrinking again, and even though Doc is still technically in it, Waverly can’t help but taste his betrayal in her mouth every time she looks at him.

It’s not the only thing that’s shaky. Bulshar has them on the ropes, and it honestly looks like they might actually lose this time.

She gets to know her father for the space of exactly one conversation, and when Bulshar strikes him down, she thinks, _How does a person lose_ **_three_ ** _fathers in fifteen years_?

Some people never even get a conversation, and she knows she should be happy, and maybe someday, when the bitterness of losing him so quickly eases up off of her heart, she will be. He was a good man, she knows. The best. And it means more to her than she could say. It eases the pain that she used to feel over not being an Earp, seeing the light he brought to the world firsthand.

So, she takes his ring and his goodness and walks side by side with Wynonna to go and put an end to this. She can mourn him later, if they survive.

They track Bulshar to the stairs in the woods — Wynonna and Doc fighting him, circling around, Nicole and Jeremy and Robin working together to take down his beekeeper minions. It’s chaos and violence, but they’re all here, fighting together, fighting for each other. Waverly sees an opportunity and takes it, climbing the stairs and pulling the sword up and out. She’s too late, though, because Wynonna lunges forward at that exact moment and her hands sear against Bulshar’s flesh. They both drop simultaneously, and Waverly’s whole world slows painfully, like she’s looking at it underwater.

She can see the muzzle flash of Nicole’s gun, the tilt of Doc’s hat as Wynonna collapses against him, Bulshar’s lifeless body crumple to the snow. She drops the sword, now free, and somewhere between her hand and the ground, it’s Peacemaker again, and she’s at Wynonna’s side before metal ever touches stone.

“Wynonna!” she cries, muffled and slow, tears already streaming down her face. The beekeepers drop with Bulshar, and Nicole spins, red hair fanning out. Jeremy and Robin look around, ready for more threats, but none will be coming, not anymore.

Because Wynonna’s done it. She’s _done_ it.

Blood leaks from her nose as she looks up, glassy-eyed, first at Doc and then at Waverly.

“I don’t have it anymore,” she wheezes, and Waverly can see the light leaving her eyes.

“No!” she cries, and drops to Wynonna’s side. “Don’t you dare.” She presses first one hand and then the other on the sides of Wynonna’s face, and Wynonna’s eyes go wide. Her mouth opens, and she sucks in air. Waverly shakes with effort, nearly losing her grip, but she will _not_ lose another sister, not like this. Not when they’re so close to having a life together, free from this damn curse. Doc watches wide-eyed as the blood starts to retreat back up Wynonna’s nose, and the tears shake loose from Waverly’s eyes and splash down on her sister’s face.

The second her tears touch Wynonna’s skin, Wynonna’s eyes light up, laced with the same blue filigree that glowed over Peacemaker’s barrel when she’d aimed it at Rosita and fired.

Wynonna gasps and sits up, suddenly filled with strength.

“What did you…”

Waverly slumps back, exhausted, and Nicole is there to catch her.

“Hey, I’ve got you, baby,” she murmurs against Waverly’s hair, and Waverly knows beyond a doubt that Nicole does. That she always will, no matter what.

“It’s too heavy,” Waverly says. 

“What is?” Nicole asks, but Waverly’s already sliding her father’s ring off of her finger. It falls to the ground with a thud, heavier than it should be. 

“Baby girl, what did you _do_?” Wynonna asks again, leaning against Doc.

Waverly laughs weakly. “Now _I_ don’t have it anymore.”

“You were an angel,” Wynonna says.

“I’m still Waverly.”

And Nicole kisses her, and she _feels_ like an angel, even if the power is gone. And then Jeremy is dropping to his knees to throw his arms around her, too, and Waverly smiles up at Robin, whose hand is on Nicole’s shoulder.

Her family, together. She’s still the luckiest girl in the whole world. 

She looks at Doc.

“I’m still _so_ pissed at you,” she says. "You told her to leave."

He has the good sense to look ashamed of himself, and Wynonna winds her arm through his. 

“We did it,” Nicole says, running her fingers through Waverly’s hair. “It’s over?” 

Wynonna pushes herself up on her feet and pulls Waverly up and into the tightest hug of Waverly’s life. “No way,” Wynonna tells them. “It just beginning.”

They walk back to the Homestead, Wynonna on one side of her and Nicole holding her hand on the other, and Waverly makes silent plans to call Gus the moment she can get her hands on a phone. Mama might have left, but everyone else has stayed, and Waverly can see their future all stretched out and waiting for them.

This is it. This is the moment. 

She grips Nicole’s hand, and instinctively Nicole slows her pace to match Waverly’s, falling back behind the others. Eventually they stop, and Waverly slides her hands up Nicole’s arms to thread through her hair.

“Nicole,” she says. 

“Waves. What is it?” Even now, after they’ve been beat to shit, Nicole is inquisitive and gentle, waiting for Waverly to find her words.

“You tell me all of the time,” Waverly says, and just like that, she knows that Nicole _knows_. “And I haven’t been able to… It’s hard for me. To say it.” 

“Waverly, it’s okay. You never have to do or say anything you don’t want to do or say. Especially not with me.”

And Waverly knows it’s true. She believes it. And she’s not sure why, if it’s the end of the curse or their battle-beaten bodies or the tender way that Nicole is rubbing her thumb in circles on Waverly’s hip, but she cries. The tears come unbidden, and they’re not happy or sad or desperate. They just _are._  

“I know. I know that, and I it’s one of the things that I love about you.”

Nicole’s thumb stills, and she holds Waverly, and she _waits_.

Waverly thinks that maybe Nicole Haught would wait for her for the rest of her life. 

“You say it all of the time, and I … do. I do, too.” She moves her hand to Nicole’s jaw, and Nicole leans into her touch. She can see Nicole fighting to keep her eyes open, like she doesn’t want to miss this, not for a second. “I love you, Nicole Haught. I love you with my whole entire heart. I think maybe I always have.”

The smile on Nicole’s face is like the dawn. It starts slow and rises up until her entire face is glowing.

“Waverly,” she breathes, and it sounds like the answer to every question that Waverly has ever asked. 

Neither of them kisses the other. They’re just kissing, like it was inevitable, them coming together, sharing this moment with one another after saving the world. They get lost in one another, and Waverly forgets everything except for how it feels to be with Nicole like this.

When they break apart, Nicole’s eyes are shining, and Waverly thinks that they must be happy tears. “I love you, too, Waverly Earp. You’re my whole world, you know?”

By the time they’re back home, Waverly knows what it feels like to live in a world without boundaries, so expansive and wide and free that she feels like she can go anywhere, do anything. It’s a world full of hope and the people she loves, the people who love her, and she can’t _wait_ to see the lives they’ll all build together, now that there’s no curse holding them back. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave a comment and let me know what you think? You can also come holler at me on tumblr at https://noxinamillionyears.tumblr.com/
> 
> <3


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